


Souvenir

by father (joursdenfantsmorts)



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joursdenfantsmorts/pseuds/father
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Hannibal the idea over Alana's mobile phone was welcome, the memory of a quiet voice and a sharp tongue and an anchor in the deep sea. Hannibal the person is peculiar and unsettling and perplexing. Hannibal the person is the fast bright light that kills the deer on the lonely backwood road.</i> </p><p>Will (unwillingly) learns the texture of human flesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Souvenir

**Author's Note:**

> just stretching out the writing muscles a bit.
> 
> Not beta'd.
> 
> addendum: sorry, sorry, just realised that the preview/summary sounded a lot more suggestive than this is. i meant cannibalism. not sex. cannibalism.  
> and i guess it's only slash if you squint.... it was a lot clearer in my head

"Will? Will!" 

Searing bright light, eyelids peeled back. He begins to hyperventilate. His watch is still in perfect working order; he knows it has been exactly two weeks since he has last seen anything above the soft glow of a mosquito lantern. He is filthy and weak and hungry, but he does not look forward to his next meal. A hose-down, on the other hand, would be nice, but he knows better than to give voice to his wishes. Fresh air from the stairwell reminds him that inside of his mouth is disgusting; he has tried his best to clean his teeth and his tongue and his upper palette, but there is only so much he can do.

"Medic! Get a goddamned medic in here right now!" The distant sound of raised voices and quickly moving feet elicit a shudder from his cowering shoulders. "God, that stinks to high heaven. Will. Will, calm down. Can you hear me?"

He can't remember if there was ever more than one towering man whose presence graced his prison; the abundance of movement confuses him. The constant press of nausea he has felt intermittently at the back of his throat makes itself known again, and he whimpers pathetically (like a dog, a kicked dog) as the noise from beyond the wall of light increases tenfold. 

It doesn't matter overly much. He will still be here when he wakes, he will still be here when he wakes. If he wakes.

\---------------------

Jack Crawford has had better days. He's had better assignments, better denouements. Will is usually at the centre of those better denouements; trust him to find his way into the worst, as well.

The room is dank and wet and cold, the crudely dug basement of a cabin in the high woods. Patchwork concrete with the scattered imprints of low-quality plyform panels reaches the middle of the far wall and gives way to what, presumably, is the broad root of one of many black oaks in the forest. The wet aggravates the smell of rot and decomposition, stout wooden beams that hold up the ceiling bending dangerously under the dead weight of four (or five; he looks again) dismembered people-- it is hard to tell, with so many parts sown like seeds on the grime, which belongs to whom.

His team scurries about like white-robed rats, intently cataloguing the newly sharpened cleaver balanced precariously above a cumulus of fibre and lire. They nose around discarded bones and rotting viscera scattered by the eastern wall with forced vigour and interest if only to avoid having to confront the deathly aural circumference of Will Graham, that shivering, beaten soul crouched inside the iron cage at the centre of the room. 

Sometimes Jack hates the weight of responsibility that follows his seat of command like some dolorous ghost. His conscience should rest a little easier knowing that the head of Will's aggressor has been blown away-- wet dust in the crisp mountain wind, with the terrifying kiss of a .45-- but any meagre satisfaction is crushed mercilessly as he realises it is but another bitter victory. Will sits like a corpse, bloodless and muscles stiff; he is alive, but still he mocks Jack with his sightless gaze as if his stuttering breath had expired long before this regulation rescue. Jack never really wins, but he tells himself-- and anyone who is fool enough to listen-- that he does; he could never function otherwise.

When Jack focuses on the scene again Will has laid himself to some tormented mockery of sleep. Someone brings bolt cutters and dismantles the cage. There are a few yards of dirty cloth folded haphazardly by Will's feet and a soft paper plate of half consumed meat. There is no mystery as to the origins of the meal; Zeller sneaks a longer look and is rewarded with developing biliousness as he makes some obvious connections. 

Will is responsive to a point. He rocks forwards on his knees, his limbs withdrawn, lying crooked against the bars in some sort of sepulchral freak show parody. He looks pathetic, every inch the victim, young and hopeless and pitiful. Jack feels the violent impetus of guilt racing for the forefront of his emotions; with energy he does not feel, with steely strength and control borne of tireless practice, he sets it aside and brings Will back into the light. 

\---------------------

The nurses tell him they require that he stay for three more days, observation, doctor's orders. They tell him he is slightly malnourished-- select vitamins at a dangerous low, but protein and metals at a relatively acceptable level. They tell him he might be suffering from some form of depersonalisation or derealisation. They don't take the I.V. out because he's still mildly dehydrated and they ply him with little sips of lukewarm water from a small plastic cup to wet his throat; he thinks it's a little redundant but he wasn't the one who went into medicine. He drifts a little in his head sometimes but he must admit it's nice to be taken care of once in a while. He no longer smells like rancid meat. The cot under him is firm but yields when he presses against it, and while they won't let him roll around in leporine contentment they will let him lever himself up from time to time with the electronic control. They let him adjust the lights too, but in a more tedious fashion-- they won't suffer him getting up so he has to tell them every time he wants the room dimmer or brighter. 

"Your muscles are still weak, " they tell him. He scoffs; it was only two weeks. 

It's a bit like having a retarded voice-activated lighting system, though, so he enjoys not having to move while he can. 

What he appreciates the most about the hospital is the food. It is infinitely appetising. He will take watery gruel and stringy vegetables and mushy apples in plastic baggies, packaged for children; he will take the meat, too, however mysterious it is. He can tell the difference now, and he knows the hospital only really serves chicken. The texture is unmistakable. 

Alana drops by with a 6-inch from Subway, sad eyes and sadder eyebrows. For a moment she is a goddess or an heroine arrived from the dangerous wilds of the hospital exterior, perilous journey aided by an ageing automobile, her mission to bring him the comestible delicacies of humankind. Perhaps after a day the gruel and the apples stopped being God's food and started tasting like shit; he can't really tell when. He is honestly grateful for the sandwich, though. 

While he's eating the sub Alana steps outside to make a call; her voice, however soft and modulated, comes crystal clear through the drywall. Will keeps half an ear to the conversation and chews his food mechanically, meticulously separating the ham from the cheese inside his mouth and mashing each separately. After some contemplation, he reaches over to the bed controls and levers himself up. The blood in his head slips quietly through his neck on its way to his legs, horizontal and immobile on the cot; he thinks he can feel it strip through his aorta like a racehorse as it gains momentum. He wonders idly how fast it would spray out of his body and on to the sheets if he split his arteries open in the process of standing up. 

He begins to listen earnestly again when he hears Hannibal's name in Alana's quiet drawl, ethereal and disembodied.

"I know Will likes your cooking. He's been in the hospital for the last two days with that sorry excuse for food. Cheer him up."

For a little while, Alana does not come back in, and he feels the trembling tendrils of resentment creeping up from his rigid hips like he is a damaged, war-torn soldier suffering in the alien embrace of a place he once called home. He knows he's being absurd. Alana's pitying gaze is unchanged, level, perpetual. Nobody else ever visits him either way because they all feel as guilty as sin. He doesn't know what he's bitter about, really. He does like Hannibal's cooking. 

\---------------------

Hannibal calls Will and coaxes him into a dinner appointment 6pm Tuesday next, at Alana's behest but with no little amount of eagerness on his own part. Five days is plenty for him to prepare something special; it is up to Will to convince Crawford and the hospital that he is of sound mind, as well as body. 

He rifles through his pristine collection of business cards, ideas for a series of simple pork dishes flitting through his head. Alana hadn't explained what exactly had left Will in the care of a state hospital(the very thought elicited a sneer), with the exception of some very vague hints at malnutrition and extended captivity. Hannibal can be excused for wanting to plump Will Graham up with his home cooking-- not so much, as if he were a turkey trussed for holiday, but enough to induce the glassy-eyed haze of placidity and distanced terror he has come to expect from Will after a good meal. It is only then he can indulge in his possessive fantasies; sometimes, watching Will's glowing lethargy from the other side of the table, he is tempted to lay a heavy hand on the sick man's shoulder and press his nose to Will's nape and breathe in Will's sudden, queasy apprehension gluttonously, as if he owns these dying embers of a man. He can almost feel Will's stiffening deltoids beneath his hand. "Did you just _smell_ me?" he had asked, in a time so distant Hannibal has almost forgotten-- but that he never forgets. The memory of the smell of sickness assails him silently, an inseparable association.

He thinks if Will asks again, he will tell him the truth, and why.

Hannibal looks down. He's stopped at a slip of paper with the number and address written down-- no business card. He remembers this man, gargantuan and unwieldy, belting out hoarse expletives from his truck cabin. Hannibal thinks an opened throat and stomach, a few piles of soft, greasy bacon wrapped around jumbo shrimp and some rich belly will do nicely; something familiar to the tongue of a bayou man, but not heavy enough to send Will hurling over Hannibal's pristine hardwood floor. 

\---------------------

He leaves at 5:15 PM on Tuesday and drives terribly, like some doddering Methuselah, to Hannibal's home. The sun perpetually shines into his eyes as it sets; he is travelling straight east and the light crawls from between the trees lining the road and under his vehicle's hinged sun-blocker like an incessant reminder of his hospitalising two weeks. 

"Associations come quickly," he says quietly to himself as he turns the cheek of his automobile to the sun up Hannibal's concrete driveway. 

Hannibal greets him at the door dressed in a blue and green tartan two-piece suit. His cream broadcloth English spread collar does more than enough justice to the brown and blue paisley windsor tie knot resting beneath it and the crimson milanese stitch of his lapel; he thinks the silk of Hannibal's tie is so soft that it could choke the air out of him(it only takes eleven pounds of pressure to restrict oxygen flow to the brain) and he wouldn't feel a thing. He thinks he might swoon in the streamlined curve and cut of Hannibal's long and shrouded legs and fall lifeless to the floor, blood galloping down from his head and pumping pouring pulsing quickly incarnadine out of the gape that appeared in his belly when his stomach dropped and burst like a plastic fairground fish bag on the doorstep. He cannot look above the cream collar to the man's golden skin, to his cruel lips, to his onyx eyes, to his flaxen hair, framed by the light of the foyer in this temperate northern evening. Hannibal is an alien from a foreign land; he speaks in a odd but familiar tongue and his clothes fit him perfectly, grown directly out of his shoulders and his hips and the gap between his thighs. Walmart certainly doesn't sell clothes like that. 

Hannibal the idea over Alana's mobile phone was welcome, the memory of a quiet voice and a sharp tongue and an anchor in the deep sea. Hannibal the person is peculiar and unsettling and perplexing. Hannibal the person is the fast bright light that kills the deer on the lonely backwood road. 

Stepping through the door, he feels slightly cheated. He should have been able to bring a wheelchair with him, like a real handicapped veteran-- reluctant but practical, accepting of his shortcomings. He needs a hard, sharp jolt to the bottom of his spine to keep his head from floating away; he needs armrests to grasp when he falls.

He sits to Hannibal's right because it's the only other spot on the table that has been set. He thinks he might have been more comfortable in a more distant seat; Hannibal doesn't. 

Hannibal smiles and lays a light hand on the backing of the chair. 

"I hear you're recovering quickly, Will," he says. The words flow smoothly, just as he had remembered, a milky river through one ear and silk out the other. "I made something that should be more familiar than my normal fare. I hope it sits well with you; hospital food is not especially rich." 

Hannibal leaves the room for some interminable period and returns with two steaming plates of what may or may not be mounds of pork and shrimp. The fat glistens like resin on the plate. Strangely enough, he feels no nausea at the sight of grease; his stomach no longer feels blasted open-- just empty. He tucks his chin in and scoots back in his chair, hands gripping child-like on the sides of the seat and elbows locking, and raises his eyebrows in appreciation; he is a little taken aback by how ostentatious Hannibal has managed to make the meat look but admiring all the same. He has a question, and though it feels like sacrilege to question Hannibal's good judgement, he cannot avoid asking it.

He asks, and Hannibal answers in as natural a fashion as he has ever seen.

He trusts the fine lustre of the words coming out of Hannibal's mouth, the velvety scrub at his insecurity; it's easy. Hannibal has done nothing to encourage doubt. It's just that feeling he gets when Hannibal looks him placidly in the eye– like he is staring into the soul of the instrument of his destruction, curious eyes watching him quietly as he dies. 

Hannibal taps an index finger lightly on the shantung table cloth and smiles. "The comforts of home are replicable in a culinary sense, and it is my intention that you find comfort tonight in my food, in my home." He is all of a sudden overwhelmingly grateful to Hannibal. First Alana, then Hannibal; good food seems to dictate the whim of his affections now. 

It is pleasant to watch the soft brush of Hannibal's hair as it slides over his high European brow, simple to ignore the pit of Hannibal's green-brown eyes, facile to carefully stab shrimp like some strange facsimile of Hannibal's diligent enjoyment, and everything is fine until his first bite of bacon.

His ears ring, his vision narrows, his pupils and his blood vessels dilate. The blood from his shoulders drops to his toes and his stomach moves with it. He clutches the table with claws for hands, rigid fingers connected to rigid arms and a rigid body.

He is eating human meat. 

"I'm eating human meat," he says. 

Distantly he hears Hannibal rising from his seat. "Vasovagal syncope," the dark mass of tartan moves to stand behind him. Everything is bright except for the plate in front of him and the man above him. "Not uncommon in young adults. Interesting to see it in one so hardened to horrible things."

He tries to sit down, lay down, let the blood pooling in his legs return to his brain, but Hannibal attaches a firm hand to the back of his neck and hoists him upright and the light starts to fade.

Conversationally, Hannibal continues. "Alana failed to tell me the events behind your hospitalisation; a kidnapping was mentioned, but nothing else. From this, though, your ordeal is deducible. I suppose whichever imbecile took you then has ruined your palate completely."

Hannibal watches Will's body begin to seize with a resigned expression.  
"What a pity."

END

**Author's Note:**

> Vasovagal syncope is fainting caused by a trigger of the vagal nerve; triggers can range from stress to trauma to dehydration to the sight of blood. Vasovagal syncope consists of a dilating of blood vessels so that the blood in one's body pools concurrent with gravity; if the person affected is left standing or sitting upright, loss of blood to the brain will induce fainting. Lying down will reduce the symptoms quickly. If blood does not return to the brain a seizure may occur. This is the most common type of fainting.


End file.
